How dare I polish and remove kludges from previous releases. 😆
Also, none of those kludges would have even been necessary if the project scope was properly defined from the start and the project manager didn’t let the users keep trickling in new requirements without also extending the deadline.
So yeah, how dare I go back and implement something the way it should have been done the first time?
There’s always a relevant xkcd. Lol
The trouble is that, apparently, “perfect UI” can mean “let’s take all the sidebar tabs, remove their text labels and make all their icons really abstract and in the same colour. Oh, and change their order, too, while you’re at it.”
Thank you from the bottom of my muscle memory and pattern recognition. Now, give us back our old UI that was actually meaningful, or at least make it an option if you insist that your “clean look” is more important than actual usability.
^(Apart from that, I love you JetBrains.)
the user is always right
Yep, lol.
- The user is always right
- The user has no fucking clue what they want
I hate how both of those things are true at the same time 😆
This may shock and amaze you but…
there is more than one user for your product. If you don’t know that, it sounds like you either haven’t done a user survey or you haven’t created the correct user profiles (based on that survey).
Creating a “perfect UI” without asking users what they want is not good UX. It’s just masturbation. The user survey tells you that people want A B C, etc. and in which order. You should know exactly how your changes are going to be received when you release them.
Imagine a restaurant that doesn’t ask you what you want. Instead the chef tells you “This is the best food possible” and just makes what they want. That’s what developing without a user survey is like.
There is a dangerously large population of devs and managers that look at themselves, unironically, as the gigachads pumping out ui “upgrades”
Many of these fail to realize how disruptive it is. UI change is like API breakage for the brain.
I have lost track of how many times I’ve tried to help an elderly family member with an app after some pointless, trivial, ui change. Only ending with them entirely giving up on using the app after the “upgrade” because the cognitive overhead of the change is beyond the skill that can fairly be expected for them 💔
In all my life I’ve only experienced one UI overhaul that I considered an improvement, and even then there were a few specific features that were a step backwards, even by proper design standards (the same action did two different things in only slightly different scenarios.)
Buuiuuuut I know half the time it’s just because I’m used to the old way, only the other half is it some corporate bullshit trying to push a feature no one asked for.
Yeah, I get that completely. Which is why I rarely, if ever, overhaul the whole interface.
Pretty much every change is a refinement rather than a complete redesign. In this case, the complaint was because I moved a button that was just kind of tacked-on last minute in a previous release into the action menu where it should have gone to start with. lol
I can’t believe you moved a button. HOW COULD YOU??? I trusted you, Patrick.
I still can’t do half the stuff in the windows settings app that I could in the control panel, and every update removes an option in control panel without an adequate replacement.
Inb4 “use Linux” I DO but Nvidia and Wayland is still BORKED (even with v555) and when I’m done with work I just want to load up a game and not have to fuck with drivers and never actually play. Sue me.
I’m 100% linux, even on my work PC, but I will spare you the evangelism. lol
It’s pretty safe to look at Microsoft as a shining beacon of what not to do when it comes to (re) design. I’m not an Apple fan, but I do respect that OSX has basically just had incremental / evolutional UI changes since it was first released. Any major differences (AFAIK, anyway) were slowly and progressively implemented over several versions.
I’m about ready to rehome my RTX 2080 and get an AMD card so I don’t have to deal with Nvidia’s proprietary garbage or the shit-tier open source drivers.
What’s wrong with X11?
About a year ago I tried switching to Linux and used Linux Mint exclusively for about a month and a half.
I have multiple monitors with different refresh rates, one 144hz and a 60hz monitor. The problem is that the compositor runs at the lower of the two, for both monitors. In theory it should be possible for a full screen app like a game to bypass the compositor completely, but I could never get that to actually work, games running in both exclusive full screen and borderless were kneecapped to 60hz video output because I had the audacity to have a secondary monitor connected. But even if that did work correctly, regular desktop use would still be kneecapped. Admittedly not as important, but still annoying. I ended up having to use a hacky config tweak to force the compositor to run at 144hz, which worked but also caused tearing on my secondary monitor.
On top of that, X11 straight up does not support VRR / G-sync if you have more than one monitor. And HDR? Completely unsupported.
Nice try Microsoft, I still don’t like your monthly “small” ui changes that hide the features I use and add extra “get copilot now” buttons
Nice try Microsoft
That’s the most insulting thing anyone has ever said to me. 😆
My bad, what linux distro you running?
Debian 🤘
Debian Stable?
Yep, though “Debian Stable” is a bit redundant lol.
What’s with Debian Sid?
Its for testing
Yeah, I’m sure that almost all of us have felt this way at one time or another. But the thing is, every team behind every moronic, bone-headed interface “update” that you’ve ever hated also sees themselves in the programmer’s position in this meme.
Oh for sure.
The meme is just a very exaggerated tale of moving a tacked-on, added-at-the-absolute-last second button from the previous release into the action menu where it should have gone originally. It’s an in-house application, and the people that complained are also the type that will bold an entire page because “it’s important”. lol
So. How long have you worked for Google? Not in years; in chat apps.
What’s the difference?
A year lasts longer
Hrm, I would argue that if your update gets in the way of productivity on the user side, then it’s actually worse, not better.
Sure, in a vacuum it might be superior, but that is now what is happening.
We used to rail against our users always wanting an Excel like view for everything, but when you observe them working to understand their work flow it makes sense. They use excel the other 75%of the day, we’re the one breaking their mental flow and ruining their productivity.
Just because someone got used to walking around on their knuckles doesn’t mean walking upright isn’t easier and better overall. Sure, it will be difficult, it will be uncomfortable, and they’ll have to get used to it before they see any improvement, but once they get past those hurdles even they will be amazed at how fast walking upright can be. And in the meantime, no one else who already has a tendency to walk upright will have to go through the pain and inefficiency of walking on their knuckles.
These people don’t get to pick whether they use Excel, either. They have to, they just want to get their job done and go home, too.
They don’t get paid to walk upright, basically. So why do it just so someone else can buy another yacht?
You seem very defensive of the workers. That’s cool, I’m one of them.
Good workers will do better with the right tool. Bad workers, those who are resistant to change and are unwilling to learn, will never do better. So why cater to the bad workers? Now catering to the bad workers makes sense if the job is so basic that virtually no training is required, and bad workers need to eat, too. But saying we should all crawl because they don’t want to run is absurd.
Software developers are uniquely arrogant in their belief that they have a right to choose when the workers of entire industries or sometimes everyone in the world needs to re-train on the tools they use to do their jobs.
I’m a woodworker. Imagine if I walked into the shop one day to find my table saw replaced with one of those mutant sliding table European things because the manufacturer pushed an update. “We’ve replaced your tool with one that conforms to recently adopted industry norms, buzzwords and trendy design patterns we in the table saw industry have been peer pressuring each other into adopting. You may proceed to suckle upon our genitals in gratitude and worship.”
Meanwhile I’m losing money because the tool I rely on to run my business no longer functions how I was trained to use it. I have to tell my customers that their orders aren’t getting filled because I was visited by the saw fairy and instead of building their furniture for them I have to read manuals, learn how to safely use this thing, find where all the controls went, and then remake all the jigs and tooling I relied on for production and hopefully I can get back to doing actual work before they change it again according to their needs and not mine, on their schedule and not mine.
That’s what it’s like using software in the age of nightly updates or worse cloud-based solutions. You never know when your tools will change out from under you mid-project.
Yeah, what you have to remember is that most users are pretty dumb. They don’t know how the software works, just where the buttons are to do the thing they want to do. They don’t read anything or learn anything other than what is needed for some menial task, and that they’re only employed because the company they work for is too small for it to be automated.
If your stuff is free then do what you want, but the second you start charging money for stuff, you have to be acutely aware that the change that makes sense and makes everything neater and cleaner is going to make some 65 year old in an office freak the fuck out because now they can’t do their job because their buttons have moved or the icon has changed.
